Poems by Madison Julius Cawein Part 26

Overhead the curving moon Pierced the twilight: a coc.o.o.n, Golden, big with unborn wings-- Beauty, shaping spiritual things, Vague, impatient of the night, Eager for its heavenward flight Out of darkness into light.

Here and there the oaks a.s.sumed Satyr aspects; shadows gloomed, Hiding, of a dryad look; And the naiad-frantic brook, Crying, fled the solitude, Filled with terror of the wood, Or some faun-thing that pursued.

In the dead leaves on the ground Crept a movement; rose a sound: Everywhere the silence ticked As with hands of things that picked At the loam, or in the dew,-- Elvish sounds that crept or flew,-- Beak-like, pushing surely through.

Down the forest, overhead, Stammering a dead leaf fled, Filled with elemental fear Of some dark destruction near-- One, whose glowworm eyes I saw Hag with flame the crooked haw, Which the moon clutched like a claw.

Gradually beneath the tree Grew a shape; a nudity: Lithe and slender; silent as Growth of tree or blade of gra.s.s; Brown and silken as the bloom Of the trillium in the gloom, Visible as strange perfume.

For an instant there it stood, Smiling on me in the wood: And I saw its hair was green As the leaf-sheath, gold of sheen: And its eyes an azure wet, From within which seemed to jet Sapphire lights and violet.

Swiftly by I saw it glide; And the dark was deified: Wild before it everywhere Gleamed the greenness of its hair; And around it danced a light, Soft, the sapphire of its sight, Making witchcraft of the night.

On the branch above, the bird Trilled to it a dreamy word: In its bud the wild bee droned Honeyed greeting, drowsy-toned: And the brook forgot the gloom, Hushed its heart, and, wrapped in bloom, Breathed a welcome of perfume.

To its beauty bush and tree Stretched sweet arms of ecstasy; And the soul within the rock Lichen-treasures did unlock As upon it fell its eye; And the earth, that felt it nigh, Into wildflowers seemed to sigh....

Was it dryad? was it faun?

Wandered from the times long gone.

Was it sylvan? was it fay?-- Dim survivor of the day When Religion peopled streams, Woods and rocks with shapes like gleams,-- That invaded then my dreams?

Was it shadow? was it shape?

Or but fancy's wild escape?-- Of my own child's world the charm That a.s.sumed material form?-- Of my soul the mystery, That the spring revealed to me, There in long-lost Arcady?

PROTOTYPES

Whether it be that we in letters trace The pure exactness of a wood bird's strain, And name it song; or with the brush attain The high perfection of a wildflower's face; Or mold in difficult marble all the grace We know as man; or from the wind and rain Catch elemental rapture of refrain And mark in music to due time and place: The aim of Art is Nature; to unfold Her truth and beauty to the souls of men In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast Nothing so new but 'tis long eons old; Nothing so old but 'tis as young as when The mind conceived it in the ages past.

MARCH

This is the tomboy month of all the year, March, who comes shouting o'er the winter hills, Waking the world with laughter, as she wills, Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear.

She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills The hyla's song, and hoods of daffodils Crowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear.

Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves, Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes Singing and calling to the naked trees; And straight the oilets of the little leaves Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows, And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze.

DUSK

Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold, And 'mid their sheaves,--where, like a daisy-bloom Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom, The star of twilight glows,--as Ruth, 'tis told, Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old, The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.

Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily Stumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot: Save for the note of one far whippoorwill, And in my heart _her_ name,--like some sweet bee Within a rose,--blowing a faery flute.

THE WINDS

Those hewers of the clouds, the Winds,--that lair At the four compa.s.s-points,--are out to-night; I hear their sandals trample on the height, I hear their voices trumpet through the air: Builders of storm, G.o.d's workmen, now they bear, Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might, Huge tempest bulks, while,--sweat that blinds heir sight,-- The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair: Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom, Like gathered dust, the rolling mists along Heaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blue Of skyey corridor and celestial room Preparing, with large laughter and loud song, For the white moon and stars to wander through.

LIGHT AND WIND

Where, through the myriad leaves of forest trees, The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase, The glamour and the glimmer of its rays Seem visible music, tangible melodies: Light that is music; music that one sees-- Wagnerian music--where forever sways The spirit of romance, and G.o.ds and fays Take form, clad on with dreams and mysteries.

And now the wind's trans.m.u.ting necromance Touches the light and makes it fall and rise, Vocal, a harp of mult.i.tudinous waves That speaks as ocean speaks--an utterance Of far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs-- Pelagian, vast, deep down in coral caves.

ENCHANTMENT

The deep seclusion of this forest path,-- O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy; Along which bluet and anemone Spread dim a carpet; where the Twilight hath Her cool abode; and, sweet as aftermath, Wood-fragrance roams,--has so enchanted me, That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be A Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath: Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams, That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows, And every bird that flutters wings of tan, Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.

ABANDONED

The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms, And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies, And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.

Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.

And now a heron, now a kingfisher, Flits in the willows where the riffle seems At each faint fall to hesitate to leap, Fluttering the silence with a little stir.

Here Summer seems a placid face asleep, And the near world a figment of her dreams.

AFTER LONG GRIEF

There is a place hung o'er of summer boughs And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps; Where water flows, within whose lazy deeps, Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse, The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows Tinkle the stillness; and the bobwhite keeps Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps, And children's laughter haunts an oldtime house: A place where life wears ever an honest smell Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom,-- Like some sweet, simple girl,--within her hair; Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell Far from the city's strife, whose cares consume.-- Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.

MENDICANTS

Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day begins, That pa.s.sed so splendidly but yesterday, Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray, And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as with sins, Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of skins, Tattered and streaked with rain; gaunt, clogged with clay, The mendicant Hours take their somber way Westward o'er Earth, to which no sunray wins.

Their splashing sandals ooze; their foosteps drip, Puddle and brim with moisture; their sad hair Is tagged with haggard drops, that with their eyes'

Slow streams are blent; each sullen fingertip Rivers; while round them, in the grief-drenched air Wearies the wind of their perpetual sighs.

THE END OF SUMMER

Pods the poppies, and slim spires of pods The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds Collapsing at a touch: the lote, that sods The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds, Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.

Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead!

The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the east, as from a garden bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon--like some Great golden melon--saying, "Fall has come."

NOVEMBER